Here in the Northern Hemisphere (of Earth), today marks the Winter Solstice. Most people have some understanding that this means today is the day of minimum sunlight, or the longest night of the year. Fewer people, I think, have a good astronomical sense of why that is the case.
So, in honor of the solstice, let’s do some old school astronomy. Really old school.
Let’s consider the two-sphere cosmos:
I’m not a regular reader of USA Today, but Maria tweeted this story, and I feel like I need to say something about it or else risk leaving it rattling around in my head like marbles under a hubcap:
About 70% of Americans agree, either somewhat or strongly, that it’s beneficial for women to take her husband’s last name when they marry, while 29% say it’s better for women to keep their own names, finds a study being presented today at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah asked about 815 people a combination of multiple choice and open-ended questions to come up with the findings.
Laura Hamilton, a sociology researcher at Indiana University and one of the study authors, says that while gender-neutral terms such as “chairperson” have become commonplace, the same logic hasn’t carried over to name change.
“One of the most interesting things is that a lot of people assume that because language in general is gender-neutral, that name change would also be one of those things in which attitudes would be shifting towards being much more liberal,” she says.
But she says some studies have found that younger women are as likely or more likely to change their name when they marry as their baby boom counterparts. “It’s not a straight age trend.”
Respondents who said that women should change their names tended to view it as important for establishing a marital and family identity, she says, while those who thought women should keep their own names focused on the importance of a woman establishing a professional or individual identity.
Hamilton says that about half of respondents went so far as to say that the government should mandate women to change their names when they marry, a finding she called “really interesting,” considering typical attitudes towards government intervention. “Americans tend to be very cautious when it comes to state intervention in family life,” she says.
You know and I know that science is cool, but for some reason kids can be suspicious of our declarations to this effect. (Maybe it has to do with our enthusiasm for vegetables that they don’t like, not to mention naps.)
However, Susan the Scientist is on a mission to let kids know that science rocks! Here’s a taste:
The Urban Homestead: Your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city.
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
Port Townsend, WA: Process Media
2008
In honor of Earth Day, here’s a brief review of a fascinating book about making your lifestyle more sustainable. While some friends of the blog jokingly refer to this as “that hipster survivalist book,” The Urban Homestead is not a book about how to be a green poseur. Rather, it is a book that breaks down various elements of living greener and lays out a variety of strategies — some easy and some ambitious — to make it happen
I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in a family that was fairly captivated by the U.S. space program, especially the Apollo program that brought humans to the Moon. But as impressive as those manned missions to the Moon were, what did the Apollo program accomplish? Where are our moon-bases?
Orphans of Apollo, a documentary film by Michael Potter, explores what one group of space exploration enthusiasts did when NASA’s commitment to the space age seemed to falter. By the mid-1970s, the Apollo program that put Americans on the moon was done, with two planned Apollo missions cancelled. The U.S. had beaten the U.S.S.R. to the moon and brought back some moon rocks for study but what, really, had been accomplished? Had the moon landings left a lasting impact on human culture that was more than superficial?
The impact was anything but superficial on a generation of kids whose imagination was captured by the Apollo program. As these kids grew up, dreaming of a human future in space, NASA’s visions and priorities shifted. This generation that assumed space travel and exploration almost as an American birthright felt orphaned by the American space agency.
But, as Orphans of Apollo tells it, a group of them found each other and started figuring out how to get a foothold in space. If NASA couldn’t establish colonies on the moon or manned space stations, maybe the private sector could.
Frequent commenter, sibling, and bon vivant Uncle Fishy recently set up a backyard beehive, but lately he’s been worried about the bees. This came up in a recent online chat:
Dr. Free-Ride: So, what’s worrisome about your bees?
Uncle Fishy: i dont know if they’ll make it
Dr. Free-Ride: 
Uncle Fishy: there were fewer coming out to sting me last night
Uncle Fishy: maybe it was just past their bedtime
Dr. Free-Ride: Maybe they had better things to do than sting you again
At the New York Times Room for Debate Blog, a bunch of commentators were asked to weigh in with easy-to-make changes Americans might adopt to reduce their environmental impact. One of those commentators, Juliet Schor, recommends eating less meat:
Rosamond Naylor, a researcher at Stanford, estimates that U.S. meat production is especially grain intensive, requiring 10 times the grain required to produce an equivalent amount of calories than grain, Livestock production, which now covers 30 percent of the world’s non-ice surface area, is also highly damaging to soil and water resources.
Compared to producing vegetables or rice, beef uses 16 times as much energy and produces 25 times the CO2. A study on U.S. consumption from the University of Chicago estimates that if the average American were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent, that would be the equivalent of switching from driving a Camry to a Prius.
Americans currently rank second in world in meat consumption, weighing in at 271 pounds a year, up from 196 pounds 40 years ago. And that doesn’t include dairy. We get an estimated 75 grams of protein a day from animals, and 110 grams total; the government recommends only 50 grams a day.
The idea of eating lower on the food chain to save the planet isn’t a new one. However, this isn’t a suggestion that helps the Free-Ride household reduce its environmental impact, since we are already meatless.
What’s more, figuring out how to tweak our dietary choices to further reduce our impact is made difficult by the lack of transparency about the real environmental costs of our options. The labels in the supermarket don’t list how much water, land, or petroleum-based fertilizer went into producing your pound of potatoes or peas. Nor do they reflect the amount of energy used to process your tofu, nor the natural resources to can you chickpeas, nor the fuel to ship your bananas.
All of which makes it very hard to know how to make better choices about the foods we eat.
Owing to the fact that children are vectors of disease, three out of four members of the Free-Ride household have been feverish, achy, sneezy, sleepy, and grumpy for the past few days. (It’s not clear yet whether the progression of this bug will include other dwarves.)
Since I’m still kind of dopey, in lieu of a content-ful post, I’m offering some random musings from the sickbed.
The 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, will be taking place February 13-16, 2009. This is a lovely (and long-running) bit of citizen science that aims to compile a continent-wide snapshot of bird populations during a few days in February before the spring migrations have started.
Participation is easy:
Remember the scares around December 2007 about lead in children’s toys manufactured in China? Back then, people cried out for better testing to ensure that products intended for children were actually safe for children. Partly in response to this outcry, a new law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, was passed. The intent of the law is to protect kids from harm from lead (and other substances) in children’s products. However, the effect of the law may be something else altogether.
I’ve been meaning to post on this for awhile, but I’ve finally been spurred into action by my friend Heddi at the Educational Resource Center of Santa Cruz. Here’s how Heddi explained the situation in an email to me: